


listening to hear where you are

by livingdeadlights



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Kiss, M/M, dumb teens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 23:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20750186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livingdeadlights/pseuds/livingdeadlights
Summary: This could be enough, he sometimes thinks, when Eddie laughs so hard the coke comes out of his nose and he jerks backwards in surprise and pain and falls off the hood of the car. It could be enough, to be here in the last of the day - the heavy golden hour slowness of an afternoon dipping down into the water - and to have Eddie with him and be allowed to hope the sun will never sink beyond a certain point on the horizon. To hope that the day will never end and he will turn to Eddie in a hundred years and find him there, just the same, the shadows stretching out as before because the sun hasn’t moved and the world hasn’t lengthened and everything has stayed just as it should be.(In which Richie and Eddie spend their final year together in Derry and Richie dances around the issue of what he may or may not feel)





	listening to hear where you are

They’re seventeen and the world is suddenly all uncurled - white skies that seem to stretch for miles beyond a natural horizon, as though everything they thought to be finite was instead only waiting to unfold itself into something bigger. In the afternoons, the heat rises off the blacktop and they make for the grassy places, fling themselves out into the water and imagine themselves the only ones - the world otherwise unpeopled, a vast loneliness of space reserved solely for them. Afterwards, drying out on the rocks beside the water, Bill will hum to himself and Mike will manufacture whistles from long blades of grass; soft spots of self-contained activity in a greater quiet, each of them briefly occupied with their own thing. Sometimes, Richie will roll over, one arm flung over his glasses to shield from the sun, and his leg will knock against Eddie’s and no one will notice. Nothing enormous in that, of course - Richie’s foot tipping down to latch onto Eddie’s ankle, barely movement enough to even register in the strange new vastness of the world.

The days are long that summer - the penultimate summer, fingers brushing against the edge of their final year together and then retracting, not yet ready to grasp onto the last of everything. Richie spends his time playing Double Dragon and watching movies with his friends at the Aladdin, swimming in the quarry, lighting campfires that always smoke and never seem to catch unless Bill started them, eating ice cream and reading comic books on Stanley’s bedroom floor. On his last birthday, Eddie bought him a combination cassette player and recorder and Richie spends a lot of time now practising Voices with it - doing Foghorn Leghorn or JFK with the big red button held down and then replaying, trying to figure out what it is that makes them all sound exactly the same.

“Just wanted to give you a taste of what we all have to put up with,” Eddie had said when Richie first unwrapped it, showing him how to record and how to rewind and how to store things on tape; flushing high and angry across the upper bones of his cheeks when Richie asked how much money he’d spent. “None of your business, dipshit. If you don’t like it give it here, I’ll use it to make your sister a mixtape.”

Richie had evaded his swiping hand, holding the recorder up high and grinning when Eddie made an ineffectual jump for it before seeming to realise the position he’d been put in and scowling harder. Having eked out a measly few inches’ worth of growth compared to Richie’s foot and a quarter over the course of high school, Eddie barely grazes his shoulder these days. He seems largely to have taken this in stride, as much as any yappy little dog can do, although occasionally - usually at moments when Richie places a hand on his head to prevent him from reaching for something on a high shelf - he’ll suddenly go off like a bottle rocket and then it’s every man for himself.

They spend the vast majority of their time together, although everyone has their own permutations, splinter groups that form and reform dependant on mood, on the way the day bends and fractures. Stan teaches Bill six chords on a guitar, the two of them bent with intense concentration over the old acoustic in Stan’s basement. Richie teaches Mike to play Street Fighter and then wishes he hadn’t because Mike turns out to be a natural. Bill and Eddie spend long afternoons trying to find the best way to toast a marshmallow perfectly on all sides, eating all the charred attempts and going home with their insides roiling, Eddie unfortunately failing to hide a quick sugary upchuck from his mother and ending up in the emergency room at four in the morning with his mother weeping about the phantom ulcer she’s convinced is eating away at his insides. They lost Ben a year ago, Bev much earlier than that, and it feels more important than ever to safeguard their little group in all its combinations. _Everyone’s important_, Richie finds himself thinking to himself sometimes, when the five of them are sprawled in Stanley’s rec room watching _Fast Times_ on VHS. _Everyone here is the most important person I’ll ever know_. He’ll think this and then reach unseeingly for the popcorn bucket, which Eddie is always hogging because Eddie isn’t allowed foods his mother considers a choking risk at home, and plunge his hand in and usually find Eddie’s hand there too. _Phoebe Cates, man_, Richie will say, pointing his free hand at the screen and whistling, doing Humphrey Bogart, which always sounds more like Sean Connery: _I’d like to schee her in her up closch and perschonals. _Eddie will remove his hand from the popcorn bucket, roll his eyes as though he won’t dignify that with a response. _You sound like Roger Moore_, Stanley will say, which isn’t helpful.

Richie learned to drive the previous summer - Eddie in the passenger seat, alternately shrieking and lunging for the gearstick every time Richie did something he considered not highway code compliant. This is their thing, their splinter group, Richie accidentally developing an almost professional level of control from his habit of swerving the car into the middle of the road and pulling it back only at the last second each time a car approaches from the opposite direction, literally just to fuck with Eddie. _LET ME THE FUCK OUT_, Eddie will shriek every time, his voice as high as it was in childhood and making Richie ache in a way he doesn’t entirely understand, _I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL WALK HOME YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE_. Of course, he never stops the car and Eddie never actually makes a move to leave it, tending to calm down whenever Richie lets him pick a radio station, the two of them bopping their heads and howling along to the music: _Time, time, time, see what’s become of me._

Sometimes, Richie will take the car up to the rocky overhang above the quarry and the two of them will clamber out to drink cherry cokes and eat snowballs sitting on the hood of the car, still prickly-hot and ticking as the engine cools. They will swap stories and Eddie will laugh more freely at Richie’s voices and stupid jokes, as though being away, or being alone or simply being up high has removed a layer of his resistence, like punching through a low-lying system of weather to the clearer sky above. He will look at Eddie in these moments - take in his neat dark hair and skinny legs, fine sweep of freckles across his nose - and wonder how it is he’s _supposed _to feel about this person, this person who he loves with a pain that feels like dying, like being torn into and knowing your lungs, your heart, every vital organ is about to hit the air. He’s known this for a long time, of course, carved their initials on a bridge before he knew the half of it - the way he would come to feel when he was only a few years older. He hadn’t known, at the age of twelve, that he’d dream of sucking dark spots into his best friend’s neck and wake up shaking and sweating and terrified. That he’d start to ache in places he didn’t know he had inside him about fucking ridiculous things - about Eddie’s tube socks and the way they slip down no matter how many times he pulls them up, about the way Eddie’s top teeth nip his lower lip when he’s gearing up to tear into Richie about some perceived offense. He wouldn’t know, to be perfectly frank, how much time he’d spend thinking about sticking his hands down his best friend’s fucking pants, which is probably a good thing. What he’d known at twelve was more nebulous, though he supposes not ultimately so different at its core. What he’d known is he needed to see their initials together - that strange dark summer, filled with so many horrors that fade and tangle in his memory - he’d known that Eddie’s name should come in tandem with his.

This could be enough, he sometimes thinks, when Eddie laughs so hard the coke comes out of his nose and he jerks backwards in surprise and pain and falls off the hood of the car. It could be enough, to be here in the last of the day - the heavy golden hour slowness of an afternoon dipping down into the water - and to have Eddie with him and be allowed to hope the sun will never sink beyond a certain point on the horizon. To hope that the day will never end and he will turn to Eddie in a hundred years and find him there, just the same, the shadows stretching out as before because the sun hasn’t moved and the world hasn’t lengthened and everything has stayed just as it should be. In these moments, he will look at Eddie and feel suddenly terrified, think _every second you are older _and wish he could sink his hands into his best friend’s chest and hold his heart until it calms and stills and stops him growing, stops him moving and changing in ways that might pull him away from where they are.

_Do I have something on my face_, Eddie will invariably ask when he catches Richie looking, and Richie will make some crack (_not that I can see, looks like your mother got the mustache gene_), and not say what he wants to say, which is _I want to hold your heart in my hands_ and _I’ll be so careful with it_ and _oh god I wish I knew how to keep you with me._

Sometimes, when he drives Eddie home, Richie imagines what would happen if he swerved off the road into some shaded area, stopped the car and leant over the gearstick, pulling his best friend’s face towards his own. The most logical conclusion he tends to come to when considering this scenario is that Eddie would bite him. He’s not sure why this seems plausible, really, except that it fits with everything else he knows. Regardless of any finer feelings Richie privately experiences, Eddie is a snappy little asshole with a foul mouth and a collection of very sharp teeth, and he’s never been entirely convinced that any attempt to kiss him wouldn’t just result in injury. Even so, he has imagined it other ways. Mentally pulled his best friend’s face towards his face and kissed him until his chest gives out, pushed his hands into Eddie’s hair and told him to look at him, in a way he remembers and doesn’t remember from something years ago. When he thinks about this, Richie seldom knows how to predict what Eddie might actually say. It’s a strange thing, to have a best friend whose thoughts he can read in so many regards and yet still feel so uncertain. He’s never known, really. On this point, if no other, Eddie is tight-lipped.

Over the past couple of years, there have been occasional forays in this direction for most of them - Mike’s brief dalliance with a girl in town for the winter to visit her grandmother; the girl Stanley kissed in the bleachers during a football game, who afterwards wiped her mouth and apologised that her retainer had come loose. They had all attended a party the previous Christmas, when Ben was still with them, clustering in the kitchen together feeling out of place but happy enough in each other’s company, as people they knew from school drank and danced and made out around them. Richie had created a lethal concoction from the contents of several half-empty bottles scattered around the kitchen worktop, dubbed it _Losers Punch_ and poured it out for each of them from a large melamine jug. It had tasted terrible, like coconut and cough medicine, and Stanley had spat his right out, although the rest of them had continued to drink it, growing almost immediately giggly as the alcohol rushed to their heads. Before too long, Ben and Mike had been lobbing cocktail sausages at each other from a nearby snack tray and Eddie’s face had flushed so pink he was almost magenta, his skin radiating heat as he dipped his head into Richie’s shoulder to hide a giggle at something Bill had said. Cute cute _cute. _Richie would have felt alarmed if it hadn’t been for the alcohol, but as it was he had simply sunk one hip against the kitchen island and let Eddie lean into him, rested a hand against his back and grinned vaguely as Eddie and Bill began to argue loudly about some film he hadn’t seen. _No dude, it’s Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart was in Casablanca. _Richie had considered trying out his Bogey voice again, but had been distracted by something else Eddie said.

“Wait, Hepburn? You’re talking about a Hepburn movie?” Eddie had blinked up at him, a little bleary from the alcohol but still managing to look a normal level of pissed at being interrupted. Richie had grinned, registering how much he wanted to reach out and pinch one of Eddie’s cheeks, then just doing it, because there was nothing particularly unusual in that.

“Get _off_ me,” Eddie had snapped immediately, lurching away from him to slap at his hand, “and yes I _was_ talking about a Hepburn movie before you butted in.”  


“Man, some people say guys don’t get Audrey Hepburn but I think she was hot as hell in _The Philadelphia Story_.”

“That’s _Katharine_,” Eddie had replied, still scowling, and Richie had blinked, feeling his movements start to slip a little, slow and sticky as if the alcohol has been poured directly over his nerve endings.

“Oh. Are they not the same?”

“_No_.”

Richie had grinned again and Eddie had rolled his eyes, turning pointedly back towards Bill whilst Richie had tried for a moment to remember the voice of whichever Hepburn it was in that movie, before giving up and settling on Jimmy Stewart instead. _There’s a kind of magnificence in you, _he remembered (his Mom had the movie on tape), _a magnificence that comes out of your eyes, in your voice, in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. _He had grinned to himself, thinking of trying this new voice out loud, but then someone had shouted from another room that they were going to play spin the bottle, which had interrupted his train of thought.

“Al-_right_!” he had yelped before he knew where he was, falling into Foghorn Leghorn voice without thinking, “Ah say, ah say let’s get us some _action _here, fellahs!”

Reactions had not been enthusiastic, even despite the alcohol - Bill protesting that they barely knew anyone at this party to talk to, let alone kiss, and Stanley reminding him that Gretta Keene was in the next room somewhere and that probably none of them would escape a bloody nose if the bottle one of them span happened to land on her. Eddie, meanwhile, had protested that he _didn’t want to do any _\- and hadn’t finished the sentence, though Richie had finished it a lot for himself, much later. _Didn’t want to do any kissing - didn’t want to do anything wrong. _Richie, for his part, _had_ gone off and done some some kissing that night, dragging Mike with him into spin the bottle and sloppy-kissing Tabitha Jones and then Cathy Killick before sloping off into the bathroom to be quietly sick in the sink. By the time he had emerged, Eddie and Bill and Ben had sloped off and Mike was macking onto some girl in a corner, but Stanley was still waiting on the veranda with his car keys in hand to drive him home.

He has thought about this night quite a lot subsequently, particularly when he’s speeding Eddie home in his third hand Plymouth Reliant and Eddie is yelling _Slow down! Slow down! We have time! _He thinks about the way it felt to kiss Cathy Killick, the candy apple taste of her tongue in his mouth and the way it had been nice and fun and unremarkable and how disappointed he’d been moments afterwards when he’d realised Eddie had gone home. He thinks a lot, too, about _I don’t want to do any - _thinks about what Eddie would say if he kissed him and how easy it would be to do that here, in the car, with the night drawing in and the sky opening up into its first bright extravagance of stars.

He always drops Eddie off half a block from his house, because Mrs K disapproves of teenagers in cars generally and Richie in particular. They have a routine, of sorts. Richie will switch off the music and Eddie will check that nothing has fallen out of his backpack before turning to grin at Richie - _later days, Trashmouth. _Richie will reach out to ruffle his hair until Eddie slaps at his hand and they will restate whatever plans they all have for tomorrow. Then Eddie will get out, leaning on the open window once the door is closed to crane his neck back into the car, his small face pale in the streetlight. _Don’t go, _Richie will always want to say at this point, though instead he will tell Eddie not to mess up the paintwork with his spiky elbows and Eddie will retort _what paintwork, this piece of junk looks like it’s been driven through acid rain_ and then Richie will do a Porky Pig voice for no earthly reason whatsoever and Eddie will roll his eyes and stand up straight, knocking his hand on the roof of the car and Richie will give him the finger as he drives away. And he will watch him in the rearview mirror as he goes - small figure, swiftly receding into the dark.

+

When they were young, it came to him in stages. Tennis shoes and white socks, peanut butter, _Ferris Bueller _and cassettes he stole from his Dad. Sitting in Algebra on torpid Wednesday afternoons, staring out of the window and wondering what they’d do on Saturday. Sloping through school corridors, trying to avoid Bowers and Gretta Keene, looking out for Big Bill in his too-short khakis, Stanley carrying heaps of extra-curricular reading, the ironed points of Eddie’s pink polo collar. _What d’you guys want to do tomorrow, _always asked without hesitation, without doubt that there would be something to do.

Aged nine: the four of them sleeping over for the first time, parcelled out in sleeping bags on Bill’s bedroom floor. Eddie had had three sherbet fountains in a row and started giggling like a prom queen getting blazed behind the gym. _Guys...guys I think I’m seeing spots...how much sherbet is a recommended dose. _Later on, he’d staggered to the bathroom in the middle of the night to vomit and Richie had heard him, padding along the corridor in his pyjamas to hover in the doorway until Eddie had stopped throwing up and started crying - a little boy cry, snotty and abject, scared of sleeping somewhere unfamiliar, of his fizzy pink sherbet puke. _Hey now, _Richie had whispered, worried about waking Bill’s parents (of one of them deciding to call Mrs K), _nothing bad about a little bit of upchuck. _He had crouched down awkwardly in the space between the toilet and the wall, placed a hand on Eddie’s back - the sparrow bones of his shoulders. _My m-mom’s gonna be so mad, _Eddie had snivelled and Richie had grinned at him. _Well! No reason she actually has to know, is there? _Eddie had blinked at him, forehead clammy in the greenish gloom of the bathroom and Richie had realised this course of action had never even occurred to him. _I say, sir, _he had started, in an accent he hoped sounded convincingly British, _no need to tell the neighbourhood about it, what what? _Eddie had snorted, turning back to the toilet bowl and spitting, and Richie had clenched a fist briefly in the back of his pyjama shirt before releasing. _Atta boy, hawk it up._

Aged eleven: watching America’s Most Wanted on Stanley’s rec room couch, rain hammering the windows, passing a bar of Hershey’s back and forth. Mrs Uris had told them there was no way any of them were leaving until the weather cleared - _I’ll call and tell your mothers where you are - _and the evening had consequently felt like a strange kind of reprieve. Blank space between Out and Home again, the four of them clustered on the sofa in a snatch of unintended time. Sandwiched between Eddie and the arm of the sofa, Richie had hooked his feet under the blanket Mrs Uris had provided, keeping up a running commentary on the wanted criminals who flashed up on screen: _Oh yeah, oh yeah he definitely did it. I know a guilty face when I see one, hoo boy_. Eddie had shoved him, grabbed the chocolate from his hands. _Of course he **did **it, moron, it’s America’s Most Wanted. _He had shuddered very suddenly, dragging up the blanket to a point above his shoulders so that only his neck and small head were visible. _Man, I heard somewhere that there are currently 189 active serial killers living along the Eastern seaboard alone. _Stanley had made a skeptical noise. _That would be like 20 serial killers per state. That sounds pretty high. _Eddie had only shrugged, fumbling beneath the blanket a moment later and emerging with his aspirator - a quick and violent explosion of air. Richie had frowned, glancing at Eddie as he tucked his aspirator away again. Across the room, the rain was spilling down the windows in great sweeps - tidal night, wind groaning in the maple trees. _People won’t often kill you_, he had said, only quietly in Eddie ear. _I know, _Eddie had replied, without looking at him, _but once would be enough._

Aged twelve. Aged thirteen.

Seven of them, suddenly. That peculiar sensation - one they will feel again - of the world rolling back from itself, unfurling angles they had never expected to see. Terrible things, teeth and blood and mouths whaling open, the recognition that the world can crack and open, that the things they thought concrete are in fact not always what they seem.

But also: Bev in the clubhouse, putting a record on the turntable, clicking her fingers to help them find the beat. _OK, now one arm up, then two. One - two - three - four. _Stanley learning the dance routine quicker than any of them, keeping his back ramrod straight, squinting as though reading instructions from a board. Bill hoofing uselessly into one wall and then another, only fractionally less awful than Ben (trying so hard for Beverley’s sake that it seemed to cause him physical pain), whilst Mike waved his arms about too much and kept bringing down dirt from the ceiling onto everybody’s heads. And Eddie, meanwhile, dancing entirely with his elbows - fists clenched as though he was running, or fighting, or hanging on to the front of someone’s shirt - small face intense with concentration. _Why so serious, Eddie-Baby? _Richie had hooted, crashing gracelessly around and kicking his legs. _Fuck you - _Eddie had sprung towards him, knocking over a stack of Stanley’s cub scout handbooks, _like you don’t move like a sack of flying garbage. _Richie had snorted with laughter, the two of them now just sort of leaping frantically in one another’s faces. Eddie had scowled, then grinned, then scrunched his face up, biting his lip and springing about in the circle as the song came around for another chorus.

_Love my way, it's a new road_

_I follow where my mind goes _

Richie had followed him, grinning and feeling a sudden painful tightness, not just in his chest but throughout his body, as though his skin were shrinkwrapped to his bones. He had looked about, at Bev still tirelessly trying to teach Bill and Ben to do the steps correctly, at Mike now trying to twirl Stan who immediately fell off balance when someone broke his concentration. And he had looked at Eddie, of course (Eddie, whose name he had already carved, whose small clammy hand had stolen into his the night after Georgie went missing), and felt his heart like a blade in his chest. _This is them, _he had thought to himself, grabbing onto both of Eddie’s hands with a violence that made him shriek and spinning him around like a dervish, _these are the days, the people, these are the ones to keep._

+

The pressure drops, the sky opens. They return to school in the rain.

Everything is suddenly moving too fast - school plays and college applications, a flock of days counted downwards on a wall. Bill suggests a weekend camping trip in the woods beyond the Barrens and they go and try to pretend that this is just the next of many, that everything hasn’t now fallen into a state of countdown: last campfire, last marshmallow, last scrabble for the only tent that doesn’t leak. In the night, Richie crawls into Eddie’s tent under no particular pretext, flops down beside him on the triple groundsheet Eddie has naturally brought along to avoid actually feeling like he’s sleeping outside. They don’t say anything, though Eddie props himself up on one elbow to look at him for a moment - his dollar-sized dark eyes, the way he shuffles over to give Richie more room. In the morning, Richie sticks his head out of the tent to find Bill already poking at the fire, though he only smiles briefly when he spots him, coming out of the wrong tent and wearing one of the five sweaters Eddie had insisted on packing.

The days pass - Richie gets into UCLA and is slightly stunned about it. Eddie crawls in through his window that night - something he almost never does (_jesus, man, is your whole house coated in poison ivy or what)_ \- and presents him with a bottle of suntan lotion. _Factor 50. You know, to be safe. _He’s not even going for another six months but already it feels like too soon, too much, and he stashes the bottle at the very back of his closet and tries not to think about it.

It feels like there could never be enough time for everything. For their last months - the last days spent swimming, the last days on Stanley’s couch. Bill turns eighteen, then he does, then Stan and Mike, then Eddie. They buy each other birthday presents and don’t discuss the fact that Ben and Bev never call, never write, though they both promised to. _There’s something about this town, _Stanley says once, then seems surprised to find himself talking. _I mean...I don’t know what I mean, forget I said it._

Around February, Richie makes out with Cathy Killick again at a party, this time without the prompt of spin the bottle. Her mouth is warm, slightly sticky from the rum punch, and he holds her where her waist is softest and tries not to think about the skinny planes of Eddie’s body, the way his legs always look too exposed in shorts. Cathy drags him to the bathroom, says something about having always had a thing for guys in glasses, and Richie goes with it, wonders afterwards whether he should have got her number, whether he should have asked her on a date.

The year turns. The nights are enormous things, wide-eyed, unsleeping. The stars fall down, electric - shock-white in winter dark. Mike says it’s something to do with the ozone, that the thinning of a layer in the atmosphere makes the stars appear bigger and brighter. Richie drives Eddie home after days spent tooling around in the car and wants to point out the constellations to him like some guy in a sappy movie.

“So what d’you think,” Eddie says one night, checking his backpack as usual prior to clambering out of the car, “I got into NYU.”

Richie blinks at him. Eddie rolls his eyes. “Don’t congratulate me or anything.”

Richie opens his mouth, shuts it, tumbles into a late night chat show host Voice without thinking about it.

“_WELL Eddie Kaspbrak you’ve just been accepted to one of the most prestigious schools on the East Coast that’s **still** only a few hours’ drive from your mother - two words come to mind: APRON STRINGS. So, whaddya have to say about that_?”

“Fuck off,” Eddie replies, already scowling, “And it’s a seven and a half hour drive.”

Richie grins, pulls a face in the dark. Thinks _three thousand miles, _thinks _you’ll be too cold in the winter_. Eddie continues to scowl, only relenting when Richie puts an awkward hand on his shoulder.

“I mean, congratulations, man. Obviously.”

“Yeah.” Eddie nods, seems suddenly anxious, “It’ll be good, I think. I mean. I don’t know.” He looks at Richie, who registers a flash of something - his best friend, his arm in a cast, waving goodbye to him in the warm September sunlight. _I loved you first_, he thinks, nonsensically, _I loved you then. _

“Of course it will!” he responds, making a supreme effort, drawing back for a moment and then pouncing, latching an arm around Eddie’s neck and ruffling his hair until he screams.

“_NO! NO NO NO GET OFF ME YOU ASSHOLE!” _Eddie lashes out, kicks, smacks a hand against the dashboard and then the gearstick, struggling in the cramped enclosure of the car. Richie frees him after another moment, laughing and panting, feeling his stomach squeeze at the outraged flush on Eddie’s cheeks. “What the FUCK, man - ” Eddie smoothes down his hair, breathing heavily, and Richie desperately wants to ask if he’s ever kissed anyone, if there could possibly be things about him Richie simply doesn’t know.

His hand drops to the gearstick, settling next to where one of Eddie’s has fallen, and though he doesn’t touch him, he does imagine it. Imagines tangling his fingers in his best friend’s fingers, raising Eddie’s hand to his mouth. _Fuck, please let me stop wasting it_, he thinks, doesn’t really know who he is talking to. He does nothing and Eddie clambers out of the car, sticks his head back through the window as usual.

“Later days, fuckface.”

His face in the dark, his breathing still heavy. Richie remembers a time last year, Eddie’s breath coming in panicked circles. _Oh no oh no my arm my arm my arm. _They’d been press-ganged into a baseball game at school and someone had misthrown, cracked the ball into Eddie’s forearm. The game had continued around him as he’d gone down in deep field right, though Richie and Stanley had both realised after a moment that something was wrong. Running out towards him, ignoring the teacher’s whistle, they had staggered down onto their knees at his side, finding him gasping and holding onto his arm, struggling to breathe in a way none of them had known him to do in years. _Oh god my arm my arm Rich my arm my arm_, he had gasped, wheezing and grabbing onto Richie’s collar, and Richie hadn’t known what to do other than to take his face in his hands (in front of everyone, in front of the teacher) and tell him _look at me, Eds, look at me. _It would ultimately transpire that the bone was only bruised (ultimately transpire, even later, that Eddie had never had asthma at all), and though Richie had made fun of him in the normal way of things, dubbed him a drama queen for going down like that over what was essentially a sore wrist, he had still clambered through Eddie’s window that same night with a bar of chocolate wrapped up in tissue paper, _for the patient._

The nights grow longer, late sunshine spilling into the cracks of all places they return to - golden light like a crust of honey over every familiar space, filling Richie with a kind of bruising nostalgia for a life he hasn’t even left yet. Stan, Bill, Richie and Eddie talk in desultory fashion about going stag to Prom, but then Stanley has a date from his social studies class (_Meg from Sosh_, they call her, and ignore the way it aches) and Bill’s taking a girl from the summer production of _Cymbeline_ (_just friends_, he says, and Richie makes a dick joke and Stanley leaves the room). Eddie and Richie go together - not _together_, but Richie drives them in his car and they sit together by the punch bowl arguing about the proper way to tie a bow tie. They watch Stanley squinting with concentration as he twirls his date, watch as Bill trips over his own feet and apologises, and Richie thinks about dragging Eddie to the dancefloor, requesting a song and twirling him wildly and then, maybe, something else (rolling over on the rocks above the quarry, on the couch, on Bill’s bedroom floor - pressing his leg, his hip, the tips of his fingers against Eddie’s - resisting the overwhelming urge to go on, to press inwards and hold and cover every inch of Eddie’s body with his own). Looking to the left, he notices that Eddie is looking at him and clears his throat too quickly, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“You’d think Big Bill would have learned to cut a rug after all that time training with Bev, wouldn’t you?” he grins, though Eddie’s expression doesn’t do what he was expecting it to, flashing through with something momentarily painful rather than wrinkling into a laugh. “What’s up?” he asks, after a moment, as Eddie moves one hand spontaneously to his chest and presses very slightly, as if trying to alleviate a pain.

“Nothing,” he says, “Just - I remember that.”

Richie nods, opens his mouth to say something but then doesn’t know what to say. Cathy Killick is dancing with a guy from Richie’s calculus class and he feels fine about that in a distant way that sort of centres around the fact that he was _never_ actually going to go with her, not really. He was never actually going to spend his Prom doing anything other than sitting with Eddie - he in a rented tux and Eddie in his own suit, because he’d rather die than wear a pair of borrowed pants - both of them awkward and uncomfortable and easier together than with anyone else in the world.

After Prom, the four of them plus Stanley’s date meet up with Mike and go to the late night diner, where they order sundaes and Richie throws complimentary breadsticks about until the waitress has to ask him to stop. Wedged into the vinyl booth between Bill and Eddie, laughing so hard at Eddie’s impression of their gym teacher that he worries he’s going to pee, Richie clasps onto the edge of the table and imagines himself drowning, clinging tight to anything that might keep him upright, above water, still here with the rest of his friends.

Bill gets up to go to the bathroom and Richie jostles into Eddie’s space to give him room to get out. Looking down, he sees that Eddie’s eyes are on him, huge and dark in the strip lighting, mouth open and slightly wet from the ice cream, cheeks pink. Richie feels his stomach seize, wants to crush him into the side of the booth - a white hot ferocious want that takes him by surprise, even despite so many years of longing for it. _You’re magnificent, _he thinks of saying, imagines it first in the Jimmy Stewart voice and then his own, _everything about you, fuck, I don’t know what to do._

“Everything ok, Rich?” Stanley’s date, who seems by all accounts to be a very nice girl, suddenly raps on the table with her knuckles, jerking Richie out of his trance, “You just went as still as that creepy Paul Bunyan statue.”

Richie blinks, shifts away into the middle of the banquette, pushes the sundae he’s been sharing with Eddie away.

He still remembers - not_ that_, exactly, but something. _Your dirty little secret. _Aged eleven and feeling the thrill in his chest, despite everything, when Eddie’s hand had stolen into his the night after Georgie disappeared. He remembers the way his heart had thrummed at the suddenness of Eddie’s touch - hot flush in the dark and being stupidly grateful that Eddie had clambered through his bedroom window at gone midnight and not tried to turn the light on. _I don’t want to go missing, _Eddie had whispered, curled close on top of Richie’s bedcovers, and Richie had squeezed his hand and pressed as close as he dared and known and not known what he was doing. _This is sick, _a part of him had hissed, _Georgie’s missing and you’re getting some kind of thrill - _but then Eddie’s eyes had caught his, huge and brown and closer than he’d thought: _I don’t want you to go missing either_. This had been unusual - Eddie, the little shit he’d known for years, never knowingly acting like anything other than a pain in the ass. Eddie, who told him to shut up on average nineteen times a day, who’d shrieked with outrage and clawed at his face when Richie had dropped a spider down the back of his collar just to see what he’d do. Eddie, in the dark, briefly pressing his face into Richie’s neck before rolling to lie on his back, still clinging to his hand and muttering to himself: _just want it all to be ok._

Richie still remembers a lot of things. Remembers knowing and not knowing, remembers looking too long and wishing he hadn’t, being chased from the Aladdin one afternoon with words it had never really occurred to him to connect to himself. His Uncle cracking a beer in his parents’ living room, telling a story about some fucking queers who had bought the general store two towns over. _Now you tell me where honest folks are supposed to get their groceries. Can’t move an inch these days without tripping over one of ‘em. _Eddie’s Mom handing Eddie a nail brush, wiping his palms with antibacterial gel, warning him for the hundredth time about AIDS. _It’ll do for the queers first, for sure, but don’t you think for a moment that means anyone’s safe._

After Prom, after the diner, Richie goes home alone. Takes out the recorder Eddie gave him and practises Voices into the mic, replaying them each time and wondering why he can’t make them work.

_Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn_

_Elementary my dear Watson._

_I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t._

+

They graduate - Bill, Stan, Eddie and Richie in caps and gowns, hugging each other on the lawn outside school and feeling the gaps where the rest of the group should be like wounds. Eddie’s freckles stand out across the bridge of his nose, warm and dark in the summer sun, and Richie wants to grab his hand and pull him away across the grass. _That’s high school sorted, _he imagines saying, _now where?_

As it is, he throws his cap in the air - declaims in a southern belle voice: “Ah do declare ah never expected such an education - ”, and Eddie pushes him and Stanley rolls his eyes. _Beep beep Richie, _perhaps for the final time.

The time they should have had has rapidly diminished. Stanley is going to be spending the majority of his summer in Portland with family before moving on to college and Bill has a summer job in the next town over and won’t be about, most days, until late. Mike, already out of the loop as far as the school calendar is concerned, has been more and more consumed with business on the farm just recently. An arbitrary collection of problems, their summer whittled away with barely a thought. Richie can feel the promise of their final months together caving in around them. (Eddie, in the car, on nights when Richie would speed them home, screaming _slow down, slow down, we have time!_ He knows now that there isn’t enough time. Was never, could never be enough.)

They go to the clubhouse - the five of them - though they haven’t been in years and everyone (Eddie excepted) is frankly too tall for it now. Crouching down to look about, they take in the mess they left - comic books strewn about, a record still sat in the record player, all set up as if they had simply stepped out for a moment, rather than left and never come back. Richie watches Eddie picking his way across the floor towards the hammock and wants to reach out for him, thinks about the specific ache of sharing space with someone loved.

(_You’re going to have that hammock on the floor_, Ben had protested more than once, whenever Eddie would declare a constitutional crisis and throw himself into the hammock beside Richie in the name of justice, decency and binding verbal agreements. _It’s not made for two_. Richie would roll his eyes to the heavens and ask Ben if he really thought _he_ didn’t know that, all the while pressing his legs against Eddie’s and wondering vaguely if Eddie always wore the shortest shorts imaginable as some abstract method of personal tortue.)

Nights, days. Stan packs up for Portland, shares his baseball cards out fairly amongst them all, as if he’s never coming back and wants to bequeath his treasures. Bill calls Richie on the phone one night, asks if he thinks there’s something about this town and forgetting, about memory and leaving Derry. _I know I’m only working one town over but sometimes, during the day, I swear I start to mix names up...forget things...I mean...I don’t know, man. Ben and Bev always said they’d write, didn’t they? Said they’d stay in touch._

And then.

And then -

Eddie is leaving earlier than they’d imagined. He has a summer workshop in New York, the dorms are opening early to students who need it - he can settle in, look about for a part-time job before the rest of the student body returns. Perfect, really. Mrs K, who already caused a dreadful scene during graduation (cried too loudly, held her son’s wrist too tightly and too long), won’t forgive him. Locks herself in her bedroom for three days. _Fuck her_, Richie says, with a burst of righteous anger that feels more genuine than he’d imagined it to be. _Fuck her and her whole fucking medicine cabinet. _Eddie rolls his eyes, smiles a little shakily. _When I was really little, _he says,_ I had trouble breathing and then I had trouble digesting_. _I was in and out of hospital the whole time - they had me on all these drugs, they had to feed me through an IV drip. Only, I don’t know if any of that was real. _He stares at his shoes. _I mean, I know she took me to the hospital, I know she made sure they put me on all the drugs. I just don’t know if I ever needed them._

Richie pushes his glasses up his nose. _Maybe that’s why you’re so short. All that interference stunted your growth. _Eddie snorts, pushes his shoulder, but there’s no heat in it.

And then.

Richie and Eddie drive out to the town border, look up at the _Welcome to Derry _sign. Richie smokes a cigarette and Eddie waves a hand irritably in front of his face, reels off statistics about second hand smoke. _Let’s just go,_ Richie wants to say. _We’ve got a car, we’ve got a full tank of gas, let’s just go and not look back._

And then.

And then -

A party. They go, the five of them. It’s the last night. Eddie’s leaving in the morning, Stanley the morning after that. Richie can’t remember whose house this is - someone from school, someone they barely know - but he collects up all the half-empty bottles in the kitchen anyway and mixes them together, yells for Bill. _I made Losers Punch!_

The music swells, a blue aquatic light, someone running from room to room with a disco ball on a string. The place is packed with people they barely know. Glitter on the floor, collecting on the soles of their shoes. In the kitchen, the five of them talk, drink, laugh. _D’you remember the hairnets, d’you remember the dance routine. _Bill clasps at Eddie’s shoulder, smiles and looks like he’s about to cry. Big Bill, the very best of them. _Don’t forget_, he says, looks around the circle in a way that makes Richie want to cover his eyes, press his face into someone’s neck and be held there. _P-promise - promise you won’t forget. _

Things break up shortly after that. Mike and Bill disappear into the party, Stanley peels off to finish packing. They have all promised to be up for Eddie’s departure tomorrow, promised doughnuts and early morning coffee, to make an occasion of it.

Eddie -

Eddie.

Eddie takes Richie’s hand, downs his drink.

“Drive me somewhere.”

Richie has probably drunk too much, definitely isn’t feeling anything near Eddie’s definition of _road safe. _He pulls his keys out of his pocket.

“Come on.”

They go up to the overhang above the quarry, Richie blasting music and Eddie howling along as always, Richie trying and failing to ignore the ache in his ribs every time Eddie hits the chorus: _We gotta get out while we're young,'cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run._

When they get there, they keep the headlights on and the doors open, clambering out onto the sticky-hot hood of the car. There are no snowballs, no cherry coke, but Richie has a hip flask of something he stole from his father’s liquor cabinet and they share that, Eddie’s lips wet and impossible around the rim. (A flash of something - Eddie’s lips around his aspirator, Richie reaching out - _let’s have a turn, Eddie-baby, don’t bogart the good stuff_). The night is vast, moonless, drunken lurch of fireflies in the headlights. Richie peers down over the edge of the overhang into the water far below and imagines a sheer drop, falling until he finally catches up with the parts of him that seem to have been falling for years.

“Is your Mom speaking to you yet?” he asks, taking a swig from the flask, and Eddie snorts, staring out across the water.

“Good joke.”

“Jesus. It’s your last night, you’d think she’d - ”

“Yeah,” Eddie cuts him off, humps his knees and circles his arms around them. He looks very young, all of a sudden, in his tiny shorts and polo. Richie wants to gather him up, knows in the very pit of himself that this is all he’s ever wanted. “You’re coming to see me off tomorrow, right?” Eddie says, suddenly looking at him closely, and Richie blinks, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“Um, no, did I not say? I’m getting my teeth cleaned. Gotta see my ear, nose and throat guy - ”

Eddie rolls his eyes, valiantly suppressing a grin.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake - ”

“I have a prior engagement,” Richie says, warming to his theme, “I’ve got to chop some lumber, pick up a package - ”

Eddie shoves him, snorts with laughter when Richie jostles back.

“There’s no need to be an ass - ”

Richie pushes him again, laughing too.

“I’d love to see you off, Eds, but I’ve got an early meeting and I - ”

Eddie shoves at his arm, grapples for a second, then lurches across the hood of the car and kisses him.

Richie’s brain whites out. Eddie’s mouth, the hot urgent press of it. Richie sits frozen for a second, his mind running uselessly - _Eds Eds Eds Eds Eds. _His heart has stopped, his body is useless. As if from far away, he feels Eddie’s hands in his collar, the sudden white hot flush of him, his chest and his legs and everything smashed up against him. His head swims. He thinks of nothing, of the moonless sky, of floating out into the water of the quarry and drowning.

And then -

And then.

And then Eddie makes a small noise, half an abortive move to pull away, and everything rushes back at once. Richie lurches, pushes back, suddenly desperate, hands grappling, opening his mouth. Eddie gasps - _oh, oh fuck - _moves his hands to Richie’s jaw, fucking _bites_ at his mouth, falls backwards, pulling Richie with him. Richie goes, falling down over Eddie as he sprawls back across the hood of the car. His hands go to Eddie’s waist, scrabble at the fabric of his shirt, pushing up until he finds skin. Eddie is so warm Richie thinks he might catch fire. He bites at his jaw and his neck, reaches up to fist a hand in Eddie’s hair, his glasses crashing against Eddie’s face. Eddie kisses him and kisses him, breathing so heavily Richie worries he might rattle all to pieces. Briefly pushing back, Richie stares down at him, his brain nearly whiting out again at the sight of him, Eddie, pupils blown, kiss-ruined in the headlights, already reaching up for him again.

“Richie - ” he gasps, “Richie -”. Richie goes, falling back down, his tongue in Eddie’s mouth, his brain shrieking, his whole body on fire. They grapple like that, rolling until they almost fall off the hood of the car, kissing and kissing. Eddie finally pulls away, chest heaving, and Richie feels it in his own body, wants to lean down and pull Eddie’s heart, his lungs, every organ out of him and knit them to his own.

“Eds, Eds, I - ”

“Rich - ”

“Eddie I’ve always - ”

Eddie suddenly snorts, wiping a hand across his kiss-swollen mouth and laughing, high and strange.

“No you haven’t.”

His tone is shrill, slightly panicked, and Richie stares at him, lurching back from where he has been leaning over Eddie and sitting back on his heels.

“Yes I _have_.”

He sounds belligerent, ridiculous, but doesn’t know how else to say it. Eddie stares at him, pushing up to lean on his elbows, eyes looking suddenly and threateningly wet.

“You - ”

“I’ve _always _wanted - “ Richie’s throat feels so tight it horrifies him. He shivers, wiping a hand across his sweaty face and adjusting his glasses as Eddie continues to stare.

“That can’t be right,” Eddie says, barely a whisper. His stupid, arugmentative, desparately-loved voice. His hair all over his head. “No,” and now he sounds horribly like he’s about to cry, “No that can’t be right because if you did...if you always did and if _I _always did - ”

Richie understands in a flash, feels his body convulse, almost as if he might be sick from it. _If you did and if** I** did. _All this time. All this time and they never -

He shakes his head, presses a hand to his face for one moment and then removes it, holding it out instead for Eddie to take. Eddie, his dark eyes wide and swimming, fucking _asshole_ Eddie who he has loved for the best part of his life.

“Come on.”

Richie drags him into the back of the car, slams the door shut with his foot. Eddie is on him almost immediately, clambering into his lap with a speed that resembles panic, biting at his mouth and his neck.

“Oh, god,” Eddie gasps, “Oh my god -”

Richie pushes Eddie’s shirt up, fits his palms around the slender planes of his waist and feels almost deranged with love for him. Kisses him, open mouthed and messy, tipping his head back and feeling like he might blaze all to pieces at the way Eddie grinds his hips downwards, drags his teeth along his jaw. Eddie’s feet press up against the backs of the seats in front as he straddles him, the soles still thick with glitter from the party. Richie gasps, buries his face in Eddie’s neck and kisses, bites down and thinks about the place he carved their names: _R + E. _Thinks it over and over and over - _R + E, R + E, R + E._

“Don’t forget,” he says suddenly, as though it’s been wrenched out of him, looking up and moving both hands to Eddie’s face to hold it, staring wildly at him and thinking of Bill, of Ben and Beverley - _there’s something about this town and forgetting. _“Eds, Eds _please_ don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” Eddie breathes, leaning down, resting his sweaty forehead against Richie’s, and it’s everything he’s ever wanted and Eddie’s leaving tomorrow and it’s so unfair Richie wants to cry. And Eddie is whispering now - _I swear I swear I swear I swear - _and Richie holds him there, turning his head to the side, breathing into his neck.

+

Eddie leaves in a cab because his Mom refuses to drive him, won’t even leave her room to wish him goodbye. Richie offered to take him to the station in his car but Eddie shook his head slightly, smiled. _Don’t want that to be the last thing. _A soft kiss to the corner of his mouth._ The last thing we do in that car, you know._

It is early morning, gentle dewfall. The five of them congregate on the Kaspbrak front lawn and wait for the cab. They say little, clustered around Eddie’s bags and boxes, Mike telling a funny story from the party in a low, cheerful voice and Bill and Richie ribbing him gently about some girl, some kiss, some scene. Eddie and Stan exchange a few words in low voices, standing slightly apart for a moment, separated from the others by a short patch of grass, by their soft red tucked in shirts. Richie feels a little distant from himself, unreal. Does a Voice - Jimmy Stewart - _wellll now kids what’s all this boo-hooing about_?

And then -

And then.

The cab. The early morning light glazing its windscreen white and opaque. They help Eddie load his luggage into the trunk and then stand back, the five of them, spaces set aside for another missing two. Richie tries to imagine them all older, the way Bev once claimed she had dreamed, but the morning light is too clear, too stark to show him anything but the five of them as they are in that moment. He manages to picture nothing at all but Bill, but Mike and Stanley, but Eddie - most of all, Eddie - Eddie older, though he looks just the same, still small and slinging arms around Richie’s neck to dance to a song about the stars. Something they never got to do.

And then.

“Well then,” Eddie’s voice sounds wobbly, though his face is resolutely set. Bill hugs him, nearly lifting him off his feet, and he moves to Stan and Mike as Richie is still standing, irresolute, at the curb. He can’t let him leave this way, still thinking how to finish - how absolutely fucking stupid would that be?

Eddie is suddenly in front of him and Richie’s whole heart is gone. He opens his mouth and closes it, starts and then finds he has nothing to say.

“Beep beep, Richie,” Eddie says, and Richie recognises this for the kindness it is, the invitation not to talk, just for once.

And they don’t kiss, because the others are there (the others, who _know_, who have always known, though Richie won’t come to see this until it is far, far too late). But Richie does scoop him up into a hug, holding onto him with a ferocity which feels like terror, and Eddie does cling to him as if letting him go would mean the end of everything, does gasp in his ear _don’t forget. _

And then he is out of Richie’s arms, his hands in Richie’s for another second, then pulling away. And Richie’s heart is slowing, and Eddie’s eyes are wide. And then he is in the cab. And then.

And then.

+

Richie would wonder afterwards whether Eddie looked at him out of the back of the cab as it drew away from the sidewalk, whether he raised a hand, pressed fingers to his lips and kissed them. He thought he did. He was pretty sure. Although with every passing year his certainty, his sense of everything, would fade. Eddie would fade, along with Bill, Stan, Mike, Ben, Beverley, and everything Richie ever promised not to forget. They would fade and he would miss them without missing them, looking to the spaces in his life with desperation as he tried to figure out what it was that wasn’t there.

Sometimes, first in his college dorms and then later when he was living in LA, Richie would pull out an old combination cassette player/recorder and press play, his reedy childhood voice spilling out from the outdated old microphone. Sherlock Holmes. Foghorn Leghorn. A Random British Guy, talking as if to someone Richie couldn’t place: _Well I must say, Doctor K, that’s some fine work you’ve done there, what what?_

He would listen to the run of voices in their entirety and then put the cassette player away again, wondering for the thousandth time who had given it to him and whether there might be any way of listening for them somewhere on the edges of the recording. Hoping, every time he rewound and started the tape again, that if he just listened hard enough, another voice might break in on his own.


End file.
